Auckland to Wellington

After a long and tiring journey, which included a 5.5 hour wait at Cairns airport, a 2.5 hour delay, a flight which didn’t leave until 1:30 in the morning, a warm meal served at 4 in the morning and no sleep, we arrived in Auckland on the morning of Monday 28 January. Whilst waiting for our baggage, we saw a dog being led around by two immigration officers to sniff the bags and suitcases. I got a little worried that someone had been trying to use my backpack to smuggle drugs when the dog started to take a particular interest in my bag. Thankfully it turned out the dog was no drugs hound, but a fruit and vegetable hound that had smelled the peaches and apple that I had had in my bag.. These dogs are specifically trained to uphold New Zealand’s strict quarantine regulations to avoid pests and diseases being introduced to the country.

We spent the majority of our first day in Auckland catching up on some sleep and the next day to explore the city and sort things out for our trip around the country. Our first impression of Auckland was positive, and although in many ways it reminded us a lot of the cities we had visited in Australia, we noticed the atmosphere was more relaxed, the people more friendly and the climate a whole lot more pleasant and much more like home. We also took advantage of cheap Tuesday (apparently an institution in New Zealand with lots of places offering special discounts) to visit the cinema to see American Gangster, a great film! At the cinema we also had another chance encounter with Frank, a Dutch guy that we had met at the hostel from where we visited Fraser Island. It’s a small world!

On Wednesday 30 January we received our rental car (this time hand delivered by the rental company, no Travellers Autobarn episodes here!) and set off for our first destination, the beautiful peninsula of Coromandel, east of Auckland. We first made a couple of stops at Foodland, K-Mart and the Warehouse to buy all necessary camping gear as we were planning to continue our camping tradition of Australia. After a, not so long but very tiring, drive over lots of winding roads, we stopped at a lovely campsite in Whitianga. It seems that the friendliness and openness of the New Zealanders really rubs off on the tourists, and everywhere we go, people are always happy to have a chat with you. The fact that there is camp kitchen and TV/games room on nearly every campsite only contributes to this, as this is a central place for people to meet and chat whilst they are cooking, eating or doing the washing up. As soon as we had set up our tent, we were invited to join a retired Canadian couple for a couple of glasses of wine and by the time we left two days later, we had made friends with half the campsite. During the time at the Coromandel we visited Cathedral Cove, Shakespeare’s point, tried (unsuccessfully) to catch some fish and enjoyed hot water beach, where an underground thermal hot water reserve can be accessed by digging a shallow hole in the beach during low tide.

On Saturday we continued our journey to Te Kuiti, just south of the famous Waitomo glowworm caves. On the way, we stopped for lunch at Te Aroha to visit at world’s only soda geyser. As luck would have it, the site was currently under construction and the geyser wasn’t working, which left us wondering how you just stop a natural phenomena like that. Te Kuiti turned out a pretty horrible place, a little bit like New Zealand’s answer to Halls Creek in Australia. Our impression wasn’t really improved when the caretaker at the campsite told us how a few days previously he had had to call in the police to remove one of the permanent residents because the latter was completely intoxicated, rowdy and throwing up all over the place. The glowworms in Waitomo were pretty good though, although we felt slightly out of place crammed into a boat with lots of elderly, young families and Japanese to visit the cave. The glowworms reside in wet, dark places and light up to attract insects to catch them in the fine treats that are hanging off their body. I guess we should have gone for the more adventurous option of black water rafting to visit the caves, but I was slightly deterred by the price and the claustrophobic notion of walking around in a dark cave with nothing but a torch on our head for more than 2 hours.

After Te Kuiti and the Waitomo caves we decided to spend the next couple of days in the rotten egg smell of Rotorua, New Zealand’s geothermal centre. With lots of bubbling mud, boiling water and the occasional geyser, it really is a place like no other, although the continuous sulphur smell really does make you feel a little sick from time to time. We visited Hells Gate, one of the most active geothermal sites, where we also got the opportunity to make a traditional Maori wood carving (which will definitely not be my next profession if I want to make any money!) and soak our feet in a mineral mud bath – I also managed to rub some on my face, legs and arms, photos will follow!

During the previous days the heat had been building up, so it was no big surprise that that night, for the first time, it started to rain. What we hadn’t expected is that by morning, half the campsite would be under water. Thankfully, our tent was set on a slope, but some less fortunate people had had to abandon theirs in the middle of the night, as there was more than 20 centimeters of water in it. It had also cooled down considerable, and after all that water during the night we were maybe not looking forward so much anymore to the rafting trip that we had planned for that day. As it turned out, there was no rafting trip that morning as the river had been closed because there wasn’t enough water in it. Slightly relieved that we wouldn’t have to go down the 7 meter waterfall, we got the option to go to another river that afternoon. As it turned out, we were probably lucky. Rather than doing the 1.8 km we originally planned, we now got to raft 14 km through some beautiful forest in the middle of nowhere. A really nice trip and so much fun! We had a couple of bum cheek-clenching moments (as Rene would call it) in the beginning when our trainee guide (who was thankfully accompanied by a much more experienced guide) managed to steer us towards two big rocks and we got stuck. There was no way we could get through, so all six of us had to climb on this tiny slippery rock in the middle of the rapids, so that the guides could move the raft. It the meantime, the more experienced guide kept on shouting to us “Whatever you do, don’t fall off!”. But we didn’t fall off, survived the trip and were rewarded with greasy, but tasty fish and chips on the bus ride back.

The day after we set off for Taupo, but not without making a detour to Off-Road NZ, an adventure company that offers a number of thrill rides that involve vehicles. New Zealand really is the country to go to if you want to do adventure sports and need an adrenaline shot. Think of something crazy, seemingly dangerous and exciting and they’ll probably offer it. And if you do some research and choose carefully, for some pretty decent prices as well. In this case, Rene wanted to go sprint car racing, which involves driving a race buggy around a small track as fast as possible. I got to be the passenger for free, which meant a couple bum clenching moments for me, especially as Rene managed numerous 360-s as he went through the bends too fast.

Taupo is a lovely place which offer a number of free attraction such as the impressive Huka Falls, where tons and tons of water per second is pushed through this small channel before thundering down a waterfall of a couple of meters high. We also walked around the Craters of the Moon, another geothermal area, but completely different to Hells Gate because of all the different vegetation that had adapted to the extreme conditions.

After two nights in Taupo, we drove further down south, along Lake Taupo and into the Tongariro National Park, made famous by the Lord of the Ring films as Mount Doom and the Plains of Gorgoroth. One of the aims of this journey was to explore new experiences and go beyond our boundaries, and what better way to do that than to do the Tongariro Crossing, New Zealand’s most popular one day walk, an 18,5 km Alpine Crossing through spectacular volcanic landscapes. We got up Saturday morning at 5:30, put on our walking boots and backpacks and were picked up by the bus at 6, which took us to the start of the crossing. By 7am we were ready to set off, and with the sun still on the other side of the mountains and the wind blowing across the plains, it was freezing. At some point we were contemplating using our extra pair of socks to warm our hands, or even sticking them under our caps to hang them over our ears, Russian hat style. After 1 hour of moderate climbing, we got to the first steep ascent, which took just under an hour and had us clambering over rocks. With Mount Doom towering over us we then crossed the plains of the South Crater, before we got to the next steep ascent. Although not as steep, the slippery surface of loose gravel made this part maybe even worse than the first one. The fact that there were lots of other people in front and behind us didn’t help either, as someone stopping just before you, whilst you are stuck on a particularly steep and slippery piece of rock, makes you completely loose your momentum and increases the chances of sliding down. But we made it to the top. Descending past the Red Crater and down to the Emerald Lake was fun although scary, as it basically consisted of sliding down 300 meters of deep and loose gravel at a high speed, covering our boots and legs completely in dust. The rest of the decent was pretty easy and by the time we arrived at the hut for lunch, we were both pretty pleased with ourselves and still reasonably fit. At the hut, we had another chance encounter. The same South African couple that we had met 2 months earlier during our wine tour in Perth and had freakily turned up on our NYE’s photos from Sydney! They had been travelling around New Zealand for about 1 week and like us, were liking it more than the East Coast of Australia. We exchanged email addresses and agreed to stay in touch, and hopefully meet up again in Capetown in a couple of months. The last 1.5 hours of the walk was probably the worst, as our legs were tired and the continuous descending was taking its toll on our knees. By 14:20 we were at the carpark at the end of the track. We made it and only had a few small blisters. The night that followed, it started raining again, but when we woke up on Sunday morning and heard the raindrops ticking on our tent our first thought was not, as it usually was, ‘Shit! It rains.’ but ‘Thank god we are not doing the crossing today!’

The next day we drove straight from Turangi to Wellington. We had a short stop at ‘The Windmill’, where they sold all kinds of Dutch produce, ranging from Delfts Blauw pottery to liquorice and Albert Heijn peanut butter. The shop was run my one of the moodiest Dutch people I have ever met, possibly caused by the loud Andre van Duijn carnival music blearing out of the speakers. Enjoying a wonderful bag of pick-‘n-mix liquorice we continued our journey. Just before Wellington we turned off the main highway for a shortcut towards Upper Hutt, where we were planning to stay the night. We quickly realized that this route was maybe shorter, but definitely not quicker. What had looked a perfectly straight on the map, turned out to be a very narrow, winding road with lots of blind corners. With a blearing horn to warn approaching traffic, we made our way into the hills. This experience was not made any better by the other roadusers, which didn't adjust their speed or position as they passed us. As a fellow traveller had remarked earlier 'New Zealanders are very nice people, but put them behind the wheel and they turn into speeddevils with road rage.' When we finally arrived on the campsite, it was still pouring down with rain, so we decided to treat ourselves to a nice cabin. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent enjoying the dry surroundings, the comfortable bed and our own private TV.